The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(9)
His tongue lingered against the spoon. Pondering what he considered the illicit intimacy of sharing the utensil. Of tasting what she’d tasted. Of putting his mouth where hers had been.
Perhaps she’d been the secret ingredient all along.
“You’re probably wondering what makes this broth so scrumptious,” she guessed.
He blinked at her. She couldn’t read minds, could she? He dismissed the ridiculous notion right away. If so, she’d have run screaming from the room already.
He found that in order to swallow, he couldn’t look at her lips, her eyes, her hair, her throat, below her throat or … well, anywhere, really. He affixed his focus to the tiny bob dangling from her lobe. It danced and twinkled in the light of the lone candle, a diamond floating on a disk of iridescent blues and greens and pink. Crafted from a shell, maybe?
She reached out another bite to him, and a discoloration on her wrist snagged his attention. A faded bruise showed beneath the delicate lace of her sleeves. A purple tinge barely visible beneath an unsightly yellow. Had she hurt herself?
“It’s salt,” she revealed cryptically.
“It’s what?” He forgot himself long enough for her to plunge the spoon into his mouth once again, forcing him to chew.
“Black Water salt is the best in the world, and the rarest. It’s so difficult to render, that there isn’t much of it, but we locals have our ways.” She gifted him an impish wink and he nearly choked.
Lorelai. Her name had as many curls as the unruly flaxen hair spilling past her shoulders. Shorter wisps fringed about her face like a halo. How apropos. With such a lovely name, why would they…?
“Why do they call you Duck?”
She paled, even in the golden light. “You don’t know?”
He flushed along with her, wishing he could take it back. Or scoop out his own tongue with the spoon. Anything to avoid the shimmer of mortification in her eyes.
It had something to do with her uneven gait. He should have surmised that.
But he’d hoped it was an endearment rather than a taunt. A familial moniker given to a girl with a tendency to rescue motherless ducklings and the like. She’d told him about her little menagerie in one of his more lucid moments. And, for a blessed time, he’d not wanted to claw off his own flesh as he listened to her tales of silly animal antics.
He pondered the long sleeve of a shirt that didn’t belong to him. Horrible scabs stretched along his arm, his torso, and down his waist. He could not see them, but the tangible tugs and aches on his flesh alerted him to their presence.
“My ankle was broken, too, a long time ago,” she murmured. “The same one as yours, in fact. But mine didn’t … heal in time.” Lifting another spoonful of soup, she summoned a smile, punctuating the end of that topic.
Obediently, he ate.
The sound of heavy bootsteps interrupted the ensuing silence. Big, blond, and brawny, Mortimer Weatherstoke looked exactly like he’d imagined the bastard would. He surveyed the scene with the air of a princeling watching the slaughter of his supper. The novel carnage both revolting and fascinating.
“Dr. Holcomb said that the blighter had woken … Dear God.” His ruddy, handsome face crumpled into a grimace. “How positively grotesque. It’s worse than I thought, Duck.”
“No it isn’t!” she huffed at her brother. “No it isn’t.” She hastily turned back to reassure him. “Dr. Holcomb said you were fortunate it rained so mightily on the day the lye was poured on your … body.” She whispered the word, as though it were a naughty one. “The water diluted its effect. You were again lucky that the burns didn’t become infected. And now, once the scabs turn to scars, you’ll recover fully. But … better you don’t look until then, yes? Promise me?”
He opened his mouth to disagree and again found it full of the soup spoon before he could make a noise.
His impish angel was craftier than he’d given her credit for.
He glared at them both as he gnawed a particularly chewy piece of stew meat.
Mortimer rested a manicured hand on Lorelai’s shoulder, and she winced as though she’d been stung by a wasp.
His heartbeat sped to a murderous pace. The bruise on her wrist … had been the shape of a finger. Of two fingers. And if she lifted her sleeve, he’d bet he could find others. The places where she’d been mishandled by the oafish lummox looming over them.
“You truly remember nothing?” Mortimer scratched his scalp through hair several shades lighter than his sister’s. “Not your name. Not your parents. Not even where you live?”
Swallowing the stew, along with the madness that threatened each time he tried to ponder what he didn’t remember, he shook his head.
“I’ve heard of this happening before…” Mortimer stroked the sparse beginnings of a mustache on his upper lip. It looked like a half-plucked baby chick. “To soldiers and the like. Are you a soldier?”
What a fucking imbecilic question.
“I. Don’t. Know.”
Their glares locked, and suddenly he knew his own eyes were black. Black with instant hatred.
Whereas Lorelai’s honey-wheat hair was threaded through with streaks of dark gold, and her flawless skin bronzed by many hours spent in the sun, Mortimer was simply … yellow. Sallow, even. His hair, his ridiculous mustache, and his pale skin tinted an almost sickly color that was exacerbated by his mustard silk house coat.